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That may be true, but they can't undo the process of firing anchors, meteorologists, reporters, etc.

It's WABC's turn

Your commitment to the program and the kids is wonderful.

Hello everyone, Posting on this thread not because of another newscast but because I'm looking for possible help, with our "set". We of course are always wanting to improve our product, that's why we've changed graphics, cameras, etc, One of the ways which we feel that we really haven't improved on when we should, is the set, just four white walls, a monitor, and windows, but that's kind of hard with a non-existent budget. Could anyone perhaps be of assistance to see if any stations or networks (so I guess I mean the cable ones by that, has CNN completely vacated the CNN center, wonder what happened to studio 7) in our area (outside of Atlanta but of course it seems like the ATL stations won't be getting a new set anytime soon), so roughly most of Georgia, are on a temporary set or have some spare set species they would be willing to give up? Thanks for any and all advice and feedback as always!

I love this more than I should. I was interested when I saw glimpses of the new look during promos for Wild Cards and looked forward to what's to come. After reading up on it and watching the sizzle reel, I was highly impressed. - The refreshed logo looks great, and the explanation for dropping "The" from the logo (but not the name) make way more sense than anyone can give them credit for. - The imaging and its elements are incredible, fit the programs well, and look & feel like something you'd see on The CW and nowhere else. - The color palette -- including "Hot Sauce" for the logo -- is unorthodox yet refreshing, and works wonders for CW (and - again - nowhere else). The era of green and white et al. is now gone, but this group of hues is a worthy successor. If anyone thought this network is not worth watching anymore because of the expensive superhero and teen shows being largely replaced by much-cheaper yet respectable acquisitions from other countries, the new presentation surely says otherwise.

Here's the full newscast (except for sports): https://abc7ny.com/14320962/ Nice to hear that they didn't change their music.

If one of them had to move to weekend evenings, I’d go with Toni. Michelle’s been on weekend mornings for what feels like forever. I’m surprised they ended up hiring a new weekend anchor instead of sticking with Michelle and Toni though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eeO_nJqoRg From what can be heard in the voiceover, Charlie Van Dyke's voice is even less recognizable compared to 15 years ago, almost reminiscent of how Jefferson Kaye sounded in the last set of opens he voiced for WPVI before he was replaced by CVD. Also, while they kept their custom version of "Eyewitness News", they did shorten the open cut by a few seconds to fit the length of the standardized title sequence, omitting the teletype instrumental at the very beginning and starting where the musical signature begins.

Did you happen to get the opening?

The Tegna-DirecTV dispute is over. https://www.nexttv.com/news/tegna-and-directv-end-blackout-with-new-multiyear-distribution-deal Just in time for the NFL playoffs (including WKYC airing the Browns' playoff game today).

Especially in Tulsa with KTUL already white-flagging out; KOTV and KOKI probably appreciate the added viewership, but likely hate the burden put on them because their competitors can't bother with actual news coverage. I'd also love to see how that'll go during tornado and hurricane season, and instead KJRH is airing something about some old building or a cookie shop, while KOKH struggles to cover 2/3rds of the state without diluting the warning coverage quality, and you already saw WFTX struggling with their last coverage thanks to deep cuts.

Spring football is just not gonna be a thing. Bunch of rich idiots here are just burning money on nothing

I clicked on this wanting to hate it- but I don't. Their logic for taking "The" out of the logo is sound, they're using a color palate that stands out in the field, and is a fresh coat of paint that actually looks decent given what Nexstar seems to be going for. Keep in mind that green/white have been the primary colors for CW since its launch in 06. That said, the programming has to back up the refresh. The logo revamp is to show they're superhero network anymore, which is fine; but for your first major rebrand in 18 years (and that whole viewership drop in 2023 thing), you need to have programming and content to back it up. I have to admit that their sports coverage wasn't terrible- announcers for the Barstool Sports Bowl made me keep watching on their own.

Or at least moving Michelle or Toni to weekend evenings to be with Joe.

I'm surprised they're not keeping Toni Yates with Michelle. I thought they were a great pair. Yes I've been wondering this as well. Hasn't been on since Nov 28th.

She'd be my pick!

From this press release, It's official. After 25 years on the weekends, Sandra Bookman is moving to the Noon show. Also announced, former KTLA reporter/anchor Pedro Rivera will anchor Weekend Mornings, beginning February 3rd.

EDIT 1/16/24: WAFB has moved to GrayONE as of Noon on 1/16/24. Put WAFB/Baton Rouge on the clock for GreyONE - this new logo just popped up on their website: Previous logo, in place for decades with the CBS eye logo added along the way:

Add WPXI to the list.

I wonder if Ken Rosato’s return to tv was supposed to be for Good Day New York, since we still haven’t seen him pop up anywhere. If so, FOX 5 missed a huge marketing opportunity to have Scotto & Rosato!

Thanks to Colorado's pay transparency law, I am shocked at how poor the pay is in the Denver market. KDVR/KWGN also seems to be at the bottom of the pack, at least from what I've seen of producer pay. I don't think Denver is really a destination market anymore for most people in this industry.

KOLD, Tucson, 10 p.m., 1988:

I really like the overall lower thirds/OTS/boxes/etc (though there are some questionable choices in certain aspects). You can really tell a lot of thought went into making this into a comprehensive package where everything works with everything else. The in-show graphics remind me a lot of the original NewsNation graphics and the ABC O&O package being rolled out. But... and I know this is a tough pill for some to swallow, but the 3D stuff ruins it. They look like they came from a graphics package that debut 12 years ago. The opens being a bunch of 3D text and logos flying around with no reason is completely out of place in this package where everything else is designed with some thought and order. It honestly looks like they debut a mashed up old and new graphics package. Did two different firms work on this or something? Did they change course halfway through and not want to pay to redo the opens and interstitial stuff? The very first transition out of black and into the show in that WAXN video seems like it "fits" better. You can have some 3D, but stuff like the logos flying in and the letters twirling around has been a news graphics cliche for at least the past decade (where it should have been left.)

He will be doing the full 7-10 and apparently during the NFL season he’ll do Tuesday-Friday

I wonder what it would be like if Hearst and/or Graham owned a lot of small market stations as well though. Combined, they have only one station in markets below #100.

From what I have heard, Hearst and Graham run their stations well. Also they don't own as many stations when compared to Gray, Nexstar, or Sinclair, which allows them to invest in the quality of their stations.

Weigel is definitely not an afterthought in the market and they've long left their 90s era struggles at this point. They definitely have the more powerful schedule and good overall lead-ins outside mornings, and they (along with the other four ops in town) hire good people from everywhere rather than MMJs who are hamstrung from the get-go. WTMJ is just in a fugue state where they're still stuck trying to recapture their 90s peak, but with Carole Meekins about to depart they no longer have any of those people in the newsroom and it's mainly either personnel with no connection to the area, or those who came on to try to salvage things, or those who are just there because they sucked up to management still living as if Journal hasn't fully ceased to exist. There's just no encouragement there, or any management that wants it to be unique; their GM did absolutely nothing with WGBA and somehow got promoted, and their 'no comment' in that Next TV article says it all; it's a station that wants to do the bare minimum without Cincy catching onto them.

I'm working on tossing old CDs and DVDs I've had laying around and I came across these work sample images taken from Giant Octopus' website in 2003. Probably the peak of their design trendyness. It's amazing how much things have changed in 20 years!

I think it may be due to the successful culture WSVN has built through the decades in Miami/Fort Lauderdale. Many of their English-language rivals in the market have taken key elements from them or in the case of WPLG, flat out copied them completely.

I was watching Bounce last night and just curious about the logistics. Right on the money, "WSFJ-TV, LONDON, OHIO" appears at the top of the hour. I'm assuming that it is hubbed somewhere? Do they hub it here in Ohio or with the other ION stations? First of all, why isn't anybody smart enough to type "LONDON - COLUMBUS" into the computer? Second, I'm curious why they picked London as their city of license. It was Newark before, and that's about 50 miles away on the other side of Columbus. Also, they channel-share with an LPTV station. That adds another link in the chain that could possibly break. Who monitors that? Do they have to have a local presence anymore? Like an office or a studio somewhere in town? Do they have local public service requirements they have to meet anymore? And if they were smart, just as a marketing gimmick, they would bring back the WLWC call letters. I'm sure they'll just keep running this on autopilot, but if they ever do want to turn this into a real TV station, you might be able to get noticed in the market that way (like WWJ). WSFJ stands for "Winning Souls for Jesus." I wonder if anybody at Scripps even realizes that.

Ion Plus (which began as Ion Life, and now exists as a streaming network carried on a few AVOD streamers like Samsung TV+ and is soon being added along with the mothership and five other Scripps diginets to FuboTV) was the one that carried drama reruns (and lifestyle shows, most of which were also Cancon in nature, before that). Shop Ion (which used that branding only as an identifier for program listings, never on-air) was the “infomercial farm”.

Not that I want to toot my own horn, but I redid the history of channel 23 on Wikipedia. @Samantha redid the history of WBPX in Boston (which as WQTV was an unprecedented financial failure for the Church of Christ, Scientist, and as WABU had a good amount of local programming attached to it; it just struggled to find viewership at any point in its existence). WPXN and those two stations—and to a lesser extent WOAC, which indeed was sold to “Whitehead Media” and LMAed to Paxson—are the only ones in the Paxson chain that genuinely had history attached to them. The others were struggling or failed U indies which never had a chance in their respective markets, but were bought … mostly for the broadcast spectrum and must-carry on cable, which in 1996 hadn’t been upheld yet by SCOTUS. Inyo is a shell operator that explicitly exists so Scripps can continue to operate at the 39% national ownership cap for OTA stations. Ion Media didn’t have to worry about an existing chain of network affiliates (having sold off WPBF in 1996) when they set up their chain that also corresponded to the 39% limit. It’s the only reason why WVPX-WDLI was “spun off”.

Scripps spent all that money for the broadcast spectrum, not the content featured. Replacing Ion Life (nothing but CanCon drama reruns) Ion Plus (an infomercial farm) and Qubo (the only Pax diginet that had some bit of care to it but ultimately felt neglected and didn’t have a chance) with Scripps’ Katz diginets absolutely constituted an upgrade.

Most channels are turn-key jukeboxes these days. Look at virtual OTT providers like PlutoTV. You have entire "channels" of old shows. Trying to watch the 24-hour look of "A Christmas Story", both TBS and TNT are basically barker channels for the latest Superhero movies and HBOMax. Aside from sports and news, the entertainment channels are useless since all of the content can be watched without commmercial interruption and visual cluttter promoting some program they want you to watch. I can see why Scripps wants to focus on news and sports. In terms of channels, Ion is like the "Ollie's Bargain Outlet" of TV shows. Just off-network runs of mediocre TV shows no one else wants anymore.

PAX wasn't really even that great of a network. You can get the same comparable programming from Hallmark and other "family-friendly" channels now. The only thing PAX had going for it, IMHO, was Supermarket Sweep and Candid Camera. Aside from that, wasn't much of their dramas Canadian produced anyway? And it was never going to contend with the other networks with the amount of infomercials it ran.

The Pax TV—i—ION metamorphosis is very interesting to look at in retrospect. You could argue that Pax TV was a diginet 25 years ahead of its time with a lineup heavy on reruns (albeit with a few new productions) and in which the affiliates all but carried the core schedule with no deviations whatsoever. Problem was, Pax TV was a money loser from the get-go, so much so that they turned to NBC for a capital investment that wound up with NBC suing Paxson a few years later for a redemption of their investment (and vice versa) with an NBCU board member succeeding Bud Paxson as chairman. Indeed, i had a programming deal with WBTV for a number of sitcom reruns but it clearly didn’t last long at all, as the lineup became nearly subsumed by infomercials near the end of the 2000s. Rebadging as ION and focusing on procedural reruns has given them an identity they never had prior, and it now adds a piece to the overall pie of genre channels that Scripps/Katz aims to offer.

It should be noted that the Scripps/Katz networks and ION are all genre channels: Newsy -> all-news, no frills Grit -> westerns Laff -> sitcoms Bounce -> African American-focused Court TV -> trial coverage and analysis Court TV Mystery -> reality crime ION -> procedurals/drama Doozy -> the “true reality” A&E library Defy -> the “true reality” History library The purchase of ION Media was for the OTA clearances (and with Inyo as a de facto shell for Scripps without the need for SSAs/JSAs). ION is destined to become the flagship Scripps/Katz brand, assuredly with more acquired rerun programming and less reliance on day-long marathons of the same shows, but the genre won’t change.

I suspect that, in the coming days, a lot of the subchannels that are duplicated between Scripps-owned stations in the local division and the Scripps national muxes will move over for good. You have to think they are working to have a standard mux of channels but that the existing carriage agreements with other multiplex holders (such as Univision) are impeding them. Keep in mind that in 2017, Univision signed a renewal with Katz until 2024. So it could be quite a while.

I pity the poor cable companies tomorrow that have to either take 'why am I not getting (new network) that just popped up on Ion' because of their painful dependence on must-carry agreements on the main channel, having three of the same network on because Ion plopped Ion Life on a main channel in the market that used to be TBN/CW/some other network, or missing channels because you know there will be a station carrying a Katz subchannel that'll be like 'well (bleep) you too' and throw it off their lineup in spite the moment the clock strikes 6 tomorrow morning. Milwaukee's situation is such a mess with the Katz networks spread among WTMJ, WMLW and WPXE, and Green Bay the same with WGBA, WACY, WFRV, along with existing coverage of Ion on WBAY that you know will be gone soon to create another Ion/MyNet Frankenstein lineup on WACY.

I honestly feel as though Scripps did not think this through. There are now three CourtTV Mysteries, one on WPTV, one on WFLX, and one on WPXP. WPTV is now occasionally breaking up, even though I live 5 miles away from the tower. They added too many subchannels to WPTV, WFLX, and WHDT many of them the same network. It gets me frustrated and it's only been a day. They could have used one subchannel for Telemundo or another spanish network since the market is underserved for the hispanic community. I was actually hoping this was going to be the case but it looks like Scripps is really trying to get people to watch Mystery and CourtTV.

They can't. At least not yet. The stations were operated as one giant feed. Currently, there's no way to interrupt one station without broadcasting it to the entire country. At least that's what we were told.

They've indicated a few times that they intend to run the Ion stations separate from the rest of their portfolio. I'd be surprised if they tried to do news on them.

Interesting, as WDVM also has a Transmitter change in work that will finally provide a signal into metro DC itself - I live on the top of a hill, with an antenna in my attic and am looking forward to finally (re)getting WDVM, now that I’ve dropped cable... J

Basically, stations like WDLI exist in license-alone, since the spectrum was sold by TBN in the auction, and the station was physically merged onto WVPX's spectrum. Get rid of the extra license, and you can now legally have a duopoly with WEWS without endangering cap space. I'm pretty sure the Inyo deal was a stopgap in places like Cleveland where this situation existed, and the "triopoly" was in fact the shared spectrum of the former TBN station in license on the main ION station, plus the existing Scripps affiliate.

Suggestion: One of the Ion Plus licenses I'd like to see sold would be the WDPX, PSIP 58, license in Boston to NBCU which will finally give WBTS a full power home and the must carry privileges that come with it. Here's how I see it working: Scripps sells the WDPX license to NBCU who, in turn, change the callsign to WBTS and move it to WNEU's spectrum, RF29. NBCU either sells, cancels, or donates, to WGBH, the current WBTS-CD license.

I"m curious...how many NBC affiliates (or station owners) opted not to show the pre-game special for the Miami/Kansas City game that's exclusively streaming on Peacock?

It's pretty sad that a company as deeply rooted as Scripps is doing this at their TV stations across the country.

Boston 25 doesn’t tape their late news, do they? The morning and 5 opens say LIVE; the 10 open says NOW. Maybe it’s just an inconsistency…

I hate this package. The way the theme music has been chopped up and abrubtly cut off on some or quickly turned off. It doesnt even feel like COX anymore. They were always still the best at news opens and the correct timings and flow of the opens with the music and graphics. There were never rushed and they always had proper opens. Not these rushed anchor introduced 2 second opens most stations use today. These are just awful. IMO complete downgrade.

Overall the new COX look isn't horrendus it's just inconsistent. Most of the graphics are 3-D, but a lot of the lower thirds are flat.